{"id":835351,"date":"2018-08-06T12:00:12","date_gmt":"2018-08-06T16:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesportsdaily.com\/?p=835351"},"modified":"2018-08-06T14:51:23","modified_gmt":"2018-08-06T18:51:23","slug":"pittsburgh-pirates-edgar-santana-workload-pbd11","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesportsdaily.com\/news\/pittsburgh-pirates-edgar-santana-workload-pbd11\/","title":{"rendered":"Looking at Edgar Santana’s Workload"},"content":{"rendered":"
Edgar Santana<\/a> and Richard Rodriguez<\/a> are in their rookie seasons and pitched a collective 23.7 innings at the Major League level entering the 2018 season.\u00a0 This year, Clint Hurdle<\/a> has trusted the two relief pitchers to toss 52 games and 41 games respectively.\u00a0 Santana’s 52 games leads all pitchers on the Pirates and is in top 20 usage all across baseball.<\/p>\n Given the usage it was important to add some backend pieces to the bullpen to give a break to some of these pitchers, something the club did by adding Keone Kela<\/a> at the trade deadline.<\/p>\n The Pirates have had some inclination of usage with their relievers in the past, as in Saturday night’s loss the Pirates trusted Alex McRae<\/a> to give the team length instead of turning to either Santana or Rodriguez given the off day on Thursday.<\/p>\n Santana was likely unavailable because he tossed 35 pitches Friday night, but Rodriguez only threw five after the off day (he threw 25 Wednesday night).\u00a0 Giving relievers a break is needed, especially in Santana’s case on Saturday, but using McRae for 3.1 innings and 78 pitches after throwing 3.0 innings and 56 pitches Wednesday wonders what the workload limit is.<\/p>\n Looking individually, Santana has thrown 50.3 innings (on pace for 73) after throwing 76 innings last year.\u00a0 He’s on pace to throw fewer innings, which is good going forward in the last 50 games, but innings aren’t the only way to look at the workload.<\/p>\n